The Most Creative Storytellers for Startups

FormLogix: Form building tool for the pros

Many of us dream of going on a journey. For some it’s to a distant land, up a mountain, through a forest, or down a river. These so called epic adventures are somehow supposed to change us, make us something that we weren’t before. I remember a long time ago I had a client that was making money hand over fist. He was bored and his store was quite profitable without having to do a ton of work. And so he would gallivant off on these wild adventures. One such excursion was to go to the Middle East and take a trip into the Sahara. Hearing his descriptions of sitting on a camel drenched in sweat with the sun beating down on him made me question the merits of such a trip. I think relaxing in a sea side villa on the Mediterranean sounds a bit more enticing.

There are many of us who enjoy an internal adventure. One where the voyage is largely that of intellectual pursuit. These are the undertakings of the author’s of the world, or scientists, or in many cases, software developers. In today’s day an age building a web site is on such adventure. You may find an oasis at the end, or you may find an endless sea of desert sand.

One of the keys to a successful web development project is to launch your site quickly. The idea is to get it to the point where the basic functionality is working and give users a chance to start using it. During the development process there are some features that are tedious, time consuming, and rather mundane. Top of the list of web development mundanity, is forms. Forms are one of the most common ways sites are made interactive. When you post on your Twitter wall or update your Facebook page, you are entering information into a form. Although they receive little cognition, forms are the backbone of the world wide web and the reason why it has been successful. And they are so boring to build.

Now there’s a way to build forms quickly through a WYSIWYG editor so that you don’t have to do it by hand. FormLogix is a form builder that offers a complete set of tools and features so you can create forms in minutes. It allows you to create a web forms, and create email forms as well.

The way FormLogix works is simple. First you register for an account, (30 day free trial). Then you navigate to the form builder, pictured below. From there you can drag and drop the basic components of the form onto the page. When selected each form component has all the associated settings displayed off to the right. You can make adjustments both with the drag and drop editor and the settings widget. So if I add a textbox I can position it on the page as I’d like it, then I can set the color, back ground color, style, or a number of other attributes with the settings interface. For those of us who have configured the same details by hand, we know how tedious it can be.

Once the form is created to your satisfaction you can publish it. There are five options for publishing. The most basic is it assigns it a unique FormLogix.com URL. You can take this URL and distribute it wherever you like. Next is and Iframe and Script for those that want to embed it in a webpage. Then they have a link, which is an HTMLized link that points to the FormLogix URL. And last is Mail, which preformats an email announcing your script and sending them back to the URL. The many different methods of publication give FormLogix multiple uses. From embedding forms on your website to sending out a questionnaire for a specific purpose, it has a broad set of applications.

The data is collected and stored on FormLogix server. It can be viewed online with reports, graphs, and an advanced filtering system. It makes it easy to find all the people who responded a certain way on your forms. At any time you’re able to export it- you always have control over it.

In a world where people frequently embark on the intellectual challenge of launching a website, they need all the help they can get. Not spending time on things such as form building can save a lot of effort during development. FormLogix allows you to quickly create professional and attractive forms.